This invention relates to vehicles which are pedal driven and particularly to novel and improved pedal driven vehicles such as bicycles, tricycles, velocipedes, boats, catamarans, and like vehicles.
This invention is particularly useful as applied to bicycles. In addition to being embodied in an entirely new bicycle it may be constructed by employing the frame, seat and wheels of a conventional bicycle and a kit of parts constituting the novel driving mechanism of this invention. The driving mechanism can be readily applied to the conventional bicycle frame to produce a highly improved bicycle having greatly increased pedalling efficiency as compared to that of a conventional bicycle.
Numerous pedal drives for bicycles and like vehicles have been developed in the past and are shown in prior art literature and many of these relate to efforts to eliminate the relative inefficiency inherent in the circular path of movement common to the conventional pedal cranks employed for turning associated drive sprockets. Improvement in this respect is desirable for two reasons, the first of which is to provide paths of movement for the pedals which approximate more closely a straight line movement which is better adapted to the strongest and longest leg thrust of the pedalling rider and the second of which is to provide a drive mechanism which in and of itself has a high mechanical advantage in its action of converting the leg motion of the rider into the rotary motion of the driven wheel which propels the vehicle.